The Sugared Game Read online

  He got his rough hand over the muscle and flesh of one arse cheek, squeezing it. “Christ, I want this. And I’m having it.”

  Kim widened his legs obligingly. Will let his fingers delve between, over the crinkled skin of his balls, up and down the divide of his arse, stroking and rubbing as Kim rocked on his lap. He took the Vaseline from the bed where Kim had put it and scooped out what seemed even to him an excessive amount, just in case. “Suppose I get a finger up you.”

  Kim made a needy noise. Will steeled himself—it was all very well talking like he knew what he was doing, but Kim had done this bit last time—found the opening, and gently eased a very slippery finger in.

  It was tight, and hot. He slid the fingertip in and out, tiny motions, gaining confidence. Kim moaned.

  “You want this,” Will told him. He pushed a little further, feeling the muscle around the digit. “And I know how much you want it, and that is driving me out of my mind. Tell me again.”

  “I need it. I need you. I want you to fuck me till I forget my own name.”

  “What, all of it?”

  “Take that as a hint.”

  Kim was squirming on Will’s lap, rocking back and forth against the exploring finger. Will pushed it in to the knuckle, brushing against a hard knot.

  Kim made a high-pitched noise, muscles stiffening. Will rubbed the nub, watching him jerk. Kim had taught him about this last time, that men had something like a woman’s clit up there, and that seemed about right given the reaction he was getting. He had a sudden urge to find out for himself, because Kim’s fingers were clutching at nothing and his toes were curling. Maybe one day. Right now he had Kim Secretan writhing like a landed fish, and Will had never felt so powerful in his life.

  “God, you love this. You should be ashamed of yourself, how much you love this.”

  “Oh, I am,” Kim assured him breathlessly. “Utterly. Now embarrass me till I can’t walk.”

  Will withdrew his hand and scooped up another glob of Vaseline. “Up.”

  Kim manoeuvred himself up one lanky limb at a time. It seemed to take some effort. He sat back on his heels, watching as Will smeared the petroleum jelly over his own cock, taking his time because of the expression in Kim’s eyes at the display.

  “Christ,” Kim said. “Are you trying to kill me?”

  “Might be.”

  “Carry on.”

  “Pleasure.” Will knelt up. “What’s the best position for me to ram it right through you?”

  Possibly that was a bit much. Then again, Kim’s eyes widened quite magnificently, so maybe not. He moved silently to hands and knees, and Will got behind him, steadying himself with a hand to the shoulder. He eased forward. “Tell me when?”

  Kim breathed out. “Now.”

  Will pushed in, felt the ring of muscle give. Kim was tight around him, his back rigid under Will’s hand. Will took it slowly, in part because he was wary about causing hurt, in part because his ribs hurt considerably from Fuller’s kicks, and in part because he was about an inch from coming, which would be a poor show after all the big talk. He paused to give himself a minatory squeeze, and carried on, listening to Kim’s harsh breaths, working his way deeper, in and out, until they were both ready. He got hold of Kim’s hips. “All right?”

  “More than.”

  “Still remember your name?”

  “There’s an Aloysius in there to forget. For Christ’s sake—”

  Will thrust in, pulling with his hands at the same time, slamming in almost harder than he’d meant. Kim cried out, a yell that rang off the walls, and snarled, “Again, you bastard,” before Will could question him. So he did it again, finding a rhythm, Kim shouting with each thrust as if it hurt but shoving back hard against him for the next.

  “Legs wider,” Will rasped, shoving one thigh. “I want you—” He couldn’t think of a word. “Spatchcocked.”

  Kim made a noise that could have been a laugh or a sob and obeyed, going down to his elbows for balance. Will leaned forward, making him take his weight, and wrapped an arm round his hip, under his belly, capturing his prick. He lost some of the leverage this way but gravity made up for it, and he fucked Kim frantically in a call-and-response of cries and thrusts until he heard the timbre of his lover’s voice change in a way he recognised.

  “Oh, there you go,” he gasped. “What’s your name?”

  “Who fucking cares?”

  “You love it. You’re going to come with every inch of me in you and love it.”

  Kim’s legs gave way and he fell forward onto the bed, trapping Will’s arm under his belly. Will thrust hard—I’ll break the bed for you if that’s what you want—giving up on holding himself back as he heard Kim gasp and sob his pleasure, driving for his own climax, emptying his balls and his bone marrow and his heart into Kim.

  He fell forward over the other’s back, face in his neck, wondering vaguely if he’d had a stroke. There were multicoloured dots swimming in his vision.

  “Good Lord,” Kim said after a few moments. “You’re a man of your word.”

  “Was that—”

  “It was. It really was.”

  “Did I hurt you?”

  “Not in any way I wouldn’t pay good money for.”

  Will heaved himself up onto his elbows and eased out with a wince. “Bit of a mess.”

  “Don’t worry about it.”

  His manservant must be extremely understanding. Will flopped onto his back. Kim rolled far enough onto his side to sling an arm over him.

  He’d fallen asleep within seconds, the only other time they’d done this. Being awake made a fellow a bit self-conscious. He wanted to ask again if Kim had really liked it that way, but it seemed too close to fishing for compliments.

  “Was that good for you?” Kim asked abruptly. “I know it’s not your preference.”

  “Bloody good. It’s strong meat, but God, Kim. The way you are.” He put his hand up to meet the one draped over him. Kim’s fingers laced into his so easily and naturally. “You make me feel like a prize bull.”

  “You have reason to,” Kim assured him. “And on that note, I am going to claim the privilege of first wash.” He pulled Will’s hand over, kissed the knuckles, and swung himself out of bed, not without an intake of breath. Something probably stung.

  Will lay back in a warm haze of sated desire. Like the sheets, it began to cool fairly quickly.

  He wasn’t fool enough to think that a good bout in bed solved anything, or that Kim’s wounds were in his power to heal. He didn’t delude himself that asking Kim to tell him the truth meant it would happen, either. They’d been honest with one another as far as it went, and that was something, maybe even a lot, but Will had a feeling all it had achieved was to dig their foxhole deeper.

  Kim was taking up an alarming amount of space in his mind. If he was thinking this much about a woman, he’d have no trouble finding a name for it. He dropped an arm over his eyes and pushed the thought down with the rest of the more troubling Kim thoughts—how he kissed, how he smelled, how he cried out when he climaxed, how his mouth felt on Will’s cock and his fingers on his skin, and how very much Will didn’t want to know what he’d been lying about.

  He needed to stop. This way madness lay, probably literally.

  He sat up when he heard Kim emerging from the bathroom. He entered, hair wet and wearing nothing but a towel slung very low around his lean hips, which still bore faint red marks from Will’s fingers. “Bathroom’s free.”

  Will got up, naked and badly in need of a wash. As he passed, Kim caught his face with a damp hand and kissed him open-mouthed, and he fell into the pleasure of it all over again.

  Chapter Nine

  Kim had run him a bath. Will had a good scrub and emerged feeling a lot more decent. He borrowed Kim’s spare gown, and poked his head into the kitchen, where he discovered his partner in crime frying sausages.

  “Better?” Kim said. “Breakfast shortly, if you want to get dressed.”
/>   Will donned his rather mud-splattered trousers and once-white shirt, regrettably aware that he looked like a treasure-hunting Bright Young Person, only not so young or bright. Kim had put on the kettle again and they sat at the kitchen table eating sausage sandwiches.

  Will broached the subject first. “So are you going to tell me whatever it was from last night?”

  “There is a certain amount.”

  “I bet there is.”

  “First of which is that our exploits had only limited success. Skyrme has a large safe with an exceedingly modern combination lock, and she’s disciplined about keeping anything of interest in there. Her desk and filing cabinet contained nothing useful. If there’s anything juicy, it’s in the safe. Which means we have to go back.”

  “Blast,” Will said. “So if you don’t have anything to tell me about that, what’s going to piss me off?”

  “An excellent question. What I did find was a small notebook she had left in her handbag, which I had a flick through but didn’t take for fear of giving her warning. It contained names, initials, dates, sums of money. I looked for dates that seemed meaningful to me, including those Beaumont gave us for Mrs. Appleby’s previous trips.”

  “And?”

  “There were two entries with dates around the times of her return, the initials FA, and very large sums of money. About thirteen thousand pounds in total.”

  “Jesus,” Will said. “For furs?”

  “It was never furs. Mrs. Skyrme gave Appleby’s boy friend a job to keep her sweet, then made her a lifelong enemy to force her to take this last trip. That’s not about dodging import duty.”

  Will scrubbed a hand over his eyes. “Blast and damn. Dope?”

  “We’ll find out.”

  “A lot of money, anyway, and all of it going through Mrs. Skyrme’s hands. Which were gloved again last night, by the way.”

  “I’m sure they were,” Kim said. “I think she’s Aquarius, the water-carrier. Zodiac’s money-washerwoman.”

  “Jesus Christ. Let me think a moment.”

  Will had half a sandwich left. He finished it while turning matters over in his head.

  It looked like Beaumont’s lover was so far up a gum tree, she was liable to snap her neck on the way down. If Will was instrumental in her facing the consequences of her actions, he’d have served Beaumont a truly shitty turn.

  “What about Mrs. Appleby?” he asked.

  “What about her?”

  “I promised Beaumont—”

  “She killed Leinster,” Kim said. “When she gave him up to Skyrme, she killed him as surely as if she shoved him under the train herself.”

  “She didn’t know that would happen.”

  “What do you imagine she expected when she asked a blackmailing smuggler to deal with a threat for her?”

  “I don’t imagine she thought about it at all,” Will said. “She thought she was paying off a bridge debt with a bit of under-the-table work.”

  “She’s a grown woman. She knew she was committing an offence and abusing her husband’s position, and she knew Skyrme was a ruthless bitch when she gave her Leinster’s name. She might not have known exactly what would happen to him, but she wasn’t expecting an invitation to afternoon tea.”

  “Maybe. All right, yes. But I still promised Beaumont.”

  “Which is why you should have let me make the promises,” Kim snapped.

  Will glared at him. “Don’t make me a liar.”

  Their eyes locked, not in a good way. Kim’s lips were pressed together.

  He’d known the dead man. He’d probably imagined a hand in the small of his own back, a sharp push on a rainy night, the rush and clamour of an oncoming train. Will breathed out. “I’m not saying you shouldn’t be angry. But make it with the people who did this, not the ones they lured in and twisted up in their nets. What happened to Leinster is down to Skyrme and Fuller, and the greedy bastards in Zodiac, and I’m ready to go after them. But give me this.”

  “Why?”

  “Because you might have learned to betray people, but I don’t want to.”

  Kim inhaled, a tiny sharp hiss. Will shrugged. “Sorry. I’ll use a knife for you but I’m not putting it in a friend’s back.”

  “How very moral.” Kim’s voice had a clipped, almost sneering edge. “Would you prefer her to suffer no consequences at all for the misery to which her smuggling has contributed, or shall we help her obtain her divorce as well? Flowers at the wedding, perhaps?”

  “If you hadn’t lied to me in the first place, we wouldn’t be having this conversation,” Will reminded him. “So don’t push it.”

  They glared at each other a moment longer. Finally Kim rose, an irritated movement. “I can’t let another shipment of whatever the hell it is fall into Zodiac hands.”

  “I’m not suggesting you do. And if Mrs. Appleby knew for a fact Leinster would come to harm, you can hang her out to dry with my goodwill. But I made a promise, and Beaumont wouldn’t have talked without it.”

  Kim stalked to the kettle. “All right, all right. Let me think.”

  “While you’re thinking, you can tell me what we do next,” Will said. “Go after the safe?”

  “Yes. I have to get at Skyrme’s files. If she’s the money woman, she must be inner circle. She’s connected to Capricorn. She’ll know who he is.”

  “Capricorn’s the head, right?”

  “And where there’s a head, there can be a guillotine.”

  He knew that note in Kim’s voice and it set the wolf in Will howling. “Let’s do it. Can you open safes?”

  “Of course not: that’s rather the point of the things. It’s a combination lock, and short of drilling, which takes hours, the only way to open it is to get the combination.”

  “Any ideas?”

  “Well, since Mrs. Skyrme lacks the common decency to keep it written on a piece of paper in her drawer...” Kim grinned harshly. “We’ll just have to ask her.”

  THEY MET BEAUMONT A few days later. Will had arranged for him to come to the bookshop at five. Kim arrived via the back room a little before the appointed hour, Beaumont rather later, collar up and hat pulled well down. Will let him in, locked up, ushered him through to the back room, and leaned casually against the door to the shop.

  Beaumont was looking decidedly twitchy. “What’s going on?” he asked without preamble.

  “We’re looking into the High-Low still,” Kim said. “And we need a little more help from you.”

  “You must be joking. All hell broke loose last time. Fuller interrogated the whole staff about Darling and whether any of us knew him.”

  “Did you tell him the truth?”

  “Of course not. I need this job.”

  “You shouldn’t count on it lasting much longer.” Kim sounded as cool and collected as if he wasn’t talking about a man’s livelihood. “There is a great deal of funny business going on at the High-Low. Now would be a good time to start looking for new employment.”

  “Easy for you to say!”

  “True,” Kim agreed. “Nevertheless, I’m giving you the best advice I can, which is to get out before the people asking the questions are wearing uniforms.”

  “You didn’t say this would happen!” Beaumont objected. “I said I’d help you with this blackmail business, not have my whole life upended.”

  “I’m sorry about that, but it turns out Mrs. Skyrme has her fingers in a number of pies.” Kim’s voice was urbane as ever, his eyes expressionless, and Will had the oddest sensation of hearing a violin string pulled too tight. “Consider yourself fortunate that I can attest to your cooperation. It will look a great deal better for you if things go bad.”

  “For me? What have I done?”

  “You’ve looked the other way for a long time. Whether that’s enough to support a charge of aiding and abetting, I don’t know, but if I were you, I wouldn’t wait to find out. It is, of course, your mistress who will face the full force of the law.”

 
; Beaumont sprang to his feet. “What? No! Absolutely not. You can’t bring her into this.”

  “She is in it up to her neck,” Kim said. “She has been abusing her husband’s position in the Foreign Office to smuggle illegal goods.”

  “Import duty on a few furs—”

  “It isn’t furs.” Kim’s voice was cold and hard. “It’s a great deal worse than furs, and you must have realised that.”

  Beaumont’s expression made denial implausible. “You don’t understand. She’s innocent—trusting—”

  “She’s an active participant in a smuggling operation, and she has done a great deal of irreversible harm.” He paused, holding Beaumont’s gaze. “But she could help put some of it right. I need her to hand over those cigarettes and chocolates when she returns.”

  “Why?”

  “Because that’s what Mrs. Skyrme wants, and I can use them against her.”

  “No,” Beaumont said. “No, no. If you do that, Mrs. Skyrme will know Flora gave them to you. All hell will break loose.”

  Kim laughed, a short and mirthless sound. “You think that can be avoided? If Mrs. Appleby hands over everything to me tomorrow, I will do my best to keep her name out of it; if the authorities get involved, I will ensure her cooperation is noted. That’s the best I can do, but I will do it. If she hands them over.”

  “And if she doesn’t?” Beaumont demanded, and squared his shoulders. He was Kim’s height, a little broader. Will shifted slightly at the door, enough to make his presence felt, and Beaumont sent him a look of something like hatred.

  “Then I do my worst rather than my best,” Kim said. “I will personally ensure that she faces the full legal consequences for everything in which she has been implicated, which extends far beyond mere duty fraud. She will be gaoled, she will be ruined, your affair will come out, and being trapped in her marriage will be the least of her problems. I’d take the first option if I were you.”